


Before That Midnight Hour

by streetlightsky



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-12
Updated: 2015-07-12
Packaged: 2018-04-09 00:59:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4327809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/streetlightsky/pseuds/streetlightsky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“What’s wrong?”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“Nothing,” she mumbled. Everything, she meant and he understood as she peaked beyond his shoulder for the nth time. His hand ghosted over her hip to steal her attention back to him.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“Then why do you keep looking at the clock?”</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Before That Midnight Hour

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the WSSummer prompt 'midnight'. As always, characters and general universe don't belong to me. Errors, grammatical or factual, intended or not, do belong to me. Rated for vague mentions of sex and kidnapping.

**_Day 106 – 11:48 PM_ **

“You know I’m not going anywhere, right?”

She gulped. They were holed up in Morocco—again—and lying in the dark of the air-conditioned hotel room. Cocooned in white sheets and his arms, Jemma thought back to the hours in the water where her lifeline came in the form of an unsuspecting man she had gotten to truly know much too late.

Her fingers drifted up his side like dusting feathers and he brushed hair back from her eyes. She had come so far.

“I know,” Jemma lied, eyes tracing his outline. They stopped short of his face, though, with quivering control and marked dread. So instead, she held onto him—closer, tighter, with a hint of desperation in her grasp—and pressed her face into his bare chest. Her body clenched as his long arms looped around her back.

He chuckled and she almost cried.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she mumbled. Everything, she meant and he understood as she peaked beyond his shoulder for the nth time. His hand ghosted over her hip to steal her attention back to him.

“Then why do you keep looking at the clock?”

 

 

**_Day 23 – 1:41 PM_ **

“So, what are we thinking? Asgard? Exposure to another alien artifact?”

“Does that include Terrigen Mist?”

“Or it could be—”

“Don’t say it.”

“—magic.”

Jemma sighed. Having heard this conversation so many times, she finally gave up trying to change its course. Instead, she stretched her arms out onto the table and laid her head down in acquiescence as the others continued to ponder and argue beyond the doorway.

Despite her transformation, Skye’s magic theories still somehow managed to meander into their discussions. As a running joke or to lighten the mood in the otherwise supposedly tense situation, Jemma didn’t know.

She didn’t know anything.

“I’m sorry, but why have we ruled out Hydra again? This fits their M.O. perfectly.”

“The job was too easy. Hydra would’ve wanted to hold onto an asset like her. Besides, brainwashing—”

“—takes time,” Jemma finished. Seven pairs of eyes darted over to her slumped form. “Isn’t that right, Grant?” she added, gritting out his name in remembrance of her current whereabouts.

He said nothing—only searched her face for tells and disparities of a person under the influence that weren’t there.

She was different, all right. Just not in the way they expected.

 

 

**_Day 72 – 9:22 PM_ **

“So, have I convinced you yet?” Jemma said.

He looked at her—hard, straight-faced, and unyielding. Even separated from the rest of the team, he didn’t relax or open up. And after a while, after Jemma got used to her routine, she began to resent it.

It was unfair, perhaps, that she knew more about him than she was supposed to. Regardless of the variances, there was still so much he hid. The reasons to do so blurred and blended often, but nonetheless remained. Jemma wished he trusted her.

She was working on that.

“Do you believe me?” she asked him.

Some days were harder than others. Even when she followed her plans to a tee, things didn’t always turn out the same. Jemma was actually learning a lot and part of her thought he would be proud. The question, though, became which him she was referring to.

She bent down, bare breasts hanging and all, and kissed him. “Do you believe me?” she repeated in a whisper against his lips. Her hand cupped his face—thumb brushing against his cheekbone—as she appealed to his gaze.

“Yes.”

 

 

**_Day 50 – 3:30 PM_ **

“It’s just you and me right now. You can tell me the truth,” he said, coaxing a confession out of her. Jemma had none to give.

“I’ve already told you everything,” she replied.

“Goddammit, Jemma! Don’t lie to me!” he snapped, swinging about in increasing frustration. “You don’t lie very well. And you don’t lie to me. So stop and just tell me what happened.”

She watched as his fists trembled. He was losing it—patience, self-control, hope. Jemma never saw the signs before until now. The stoic, lone wolf specialist was distraught at her sight in this unfamiliar scene. The cynic in her believed those emotions to be for a more ominous reason, but Jemma had gathered enough evidence after all this time to counter her own argument.

“You’re right,” she said, rising from her chair to make her way over to him. When she touched his elbow, he whipped around on the defensive. “I don’t lie very well.”

He sighed. “Everyone knows that.”

“But more importantly, you know that. I don’t lie to you, Grant.” She took his hand—had been doing so almost a dozen times now—and squeezed for their respective reassuring needs. “I have no reason to.”

He didn’t crumble, exhale in relief, or pull her into a protective hug like she was sensing he wanted to. They were physically alone, but of course the others were or would be watching.

Still, when he gave her a stiff nod, Jemma couldn’t help but feel satisfied, happy that it could be that easy, and unconditionally safe with him for the first time since falling with the knowledge that he wouldn’t be catching.

 

 

**_Day 1 – 10:07 AM_ **

Anxiety was common these days given the number of enemies S.H.I.E.L.D. was battling all at once. Jemma had spent her fair share of time undercover at Hydra and to say the least, controlling her heartbeat when she was in the lion’s den was far harder than anything she had ever attempted.

Still, waking up tied to a chair with no recollection of the events leading up to such a predicament was certainly panic inducing on a particularly grand level. Her captors had splashed cold water onto her face in the morning and called it ‘hydration for the hostage’ only to leave her in the silence. And no matter how collected or determined Jemma was, there was little possibility of getting out of the binds without May’s know-how.

She was no match against the professionals. So when Jemma heard boots and bullets outside piercing the quiet she had been sitting in, she froze—awaiting either her rescue or demise.

The door flew open with a bang to a sight of terror rushing towards her.

“Ward?”

Her agape mouth reflected her immobile body and mind. The man in question had stopped briefly after her unceremonious address before pulling out his knife. Jemma instinctively flinched as he brought the sharp blade towards her.

“You haven’t called me that since—” he started but stopped, shaking his head instead and cutting away the ropes at her wrists and ankles.

The right thing—the smart thing—to do was to flee. Run as fast as she could away from his monstrous being before he came to extract revenge on her or finish the job he started. And she was ready to had it not been for Coulson who appeared in the doorway.

“May’s got the chopper. Let’s move,” the older man instructed before disappearing again.

Jemma had absolutely no idea what was going on.

“Can you stand?” the specialist beside her asked. She tried and wobbled before being scooped up in Ward’s arms. Every part of her screamed in protest as he carried her out of there with sickening words of comfort. “It’s okay. You’re okay now. I’ve got you.”

 

 

**_Day 39 – 5:15 PM_ **

“It’s just a precaution. Standard procedure these days, I’m afraid.”

“I understand, sir.”

It wasn’t the first time Coulson had subjected her to the Lie Detector. By now, she knew all the questions they would be asking in order, none of which actually produced the answers anyone—including herself—was looking for.

“I’m sensing a ‘but’,” the director continued. Jemma pursed her lips. She didn’t know how he had ever trusted her to work as a double agent.

“I don’t mean to challenge your decision, sir, but do you not trust Ward’s assessment?”

She recently stopped recoiling from surprise and fear each time he arrived to save her. But while the shock had disappeared, the distrust lingered. Jemma still waited for the twist, the reversion, or the return to the normalcy.

It never came.

“Don’t get me wrong, I’ve thought about that too. But there’s also the flip side and if anything, Ward would be harder on you,” Coulson commented. “I trust him, his judgment. Just like I trust that you’ll pass with flying colors.”

“But?” she pressed. The older man smiled.

“But he’s human, just like the rest of us. And it’s not that we don’t, but he has more motivation to believe in you than we do.”

 

 

**_Day 88 – 7:39 PM_ **

“I love you,” she finally told him, meaning every syllable.

He held her, said nothing, but acknowledged her words. Somehow, she knew it was the closest thing to having him say the phrase back.

Somehow, it was enough.

 

 

**_Day 107 (Present) – 11:55 PM_ **

“Please,” she pleaded, shaking off his untimely interruptions before she lost her nerve again. “I need you to listen to me, okay? I need to tell you this.”

“Baby, what are you—”

“You’re Hydra,” she blurted. He looked stunned in a way she had never seen before. And all Jemma wanted to do was take it back and keep on pretending, but she couldn’t. It was getting too real for her.

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re Hydra,” she repeated. “You worked for Garrett. You were an undercover agent on our team before S.H.I.E.L.D. fell. You were never really with us.”

The look on his face was excruciating to see, especially knowing that she was the one to put it there. And when she checked the clock again—the neon numbers telling her she still had time to back out—she winced in dismay.

“You’re not a good person,” she continued, voice beginning to break with desolation. “You hurt people and did horrible things. You kidnapped and manipulated people. You were never on my side, Coulson’s side. We were never together. You liked Skye.”

“No.” His voice was tight, dark, and fueled with the same kind of anger conjured by the Berserker Staff. It broke her heart watching him take in this information now that she could finally read him. “No.”

“Yes. You liked Skye. I was only a means to an end to you. You liked Skye and you…” She choked on her last words as a few teardrops spilled onto her cheeks. “You had to make a hard decision, I know that now.”

The moment almost felt like a lifetime ago. For all intents and purposes, maybe it was. Watching him press that button, his receding form, screaming his name as she fell out of the sky, and everything that happened after.

“You had to make a hard decision,” she murmured. And Jemma could see it in his eyes: him recognizing the very real possibility that he did something irrevocable to her, though he didn’t know what.

“Jemma…”

She kissed him, deeply, and took her last chance to bask in whatever this was with him. Jemma didn’t expect either of them to remember, but that wasn’t going to stop her. Pulling back, she caressed his jawline and sighed. She could practically hear the seconds ticking down, her make-or-break moment emerging again.

But she smiled despite it all and said, “I forgive you.”

 

 

**_10:08 AM_ **

The door flew open with a bang.

Coulson cut loose her ties and Skye helped her stand as they headed towards the roof for May.


End file.
